Quoted By:
If you're honestly still wondering why no one cares, it's simple tale-telling. Pokemon FAILED as a story.
The final victory is supposed to be against your toughest foes yet, which the SM cast certainly aren't.
There were several opportunities for Ash to win that would be considered a traditional conclusion of a journey and SM isn't one of them. You could argue that XY wasn't either simply due to how isolated it was (Typical hero's journeys involve a comparison between the beginning and the end, but XY almost entirely avoids referencing the beginning)
It's kind of sad really because it's got nothing to do with pokemon being a "commercial", they've shown multiple times that they have the capacity to be so much more than that.
They've shown that in spite of being a toy ad, and in spite of being rained on by mandates, they can tell stories that resonate with people even through the lens of a near-parody dub. They had potential and they squandered it plain and simple.